New voices in Dutch Design

2Domestic

The house is a home to a paradox. It houses the simultaneous desire to share private matters in the public realm and to seek privacy in the public. The house is an inter-face for mediating our societal relations, representing the attitude we have towards our local and global neighbours and political and economic systems. While we blur our houses on Google Street View, we invite unknown guests to rent one of our rooms for a night or two.

We bring public life into our homes and our private domestic life out to the public sphere. Yet we struggle to balance privacy and popular-ity, trust and distrust, engagement and retreat. By dimming up and down such parameters our homes change, but mainly, the lives of the inhabitants differ. The possible reconfigurations of such parameters are infinite and always changing, just as the lifestyle of the world’s citizens and their sense of home. More than a spatial arrangement, an architectural structure, a financial asset, or a set of appliances and technologies, home is a state of mind.

During PASSAGEN – Ger-

many’s biggest design event

– Bureau Europa, Dutch De-

sign Exchange, and the Insti-

tute of Relevant Studies are

presenting the exhibition DO-

MESTIC AFFAIRS. We con-

sider this exhibition as an op-

portunity to offer a platform

to new voices in contemporary

Dutch Design.

After an era of vertical eco-

nomical, political, and indus-

trial power structures, the

first decades of the 21st cen-

tury have been characterised

by horizontalisation. Our cur-

rent media-saturated age is

informed, on many levels, by

reiteration. With the

reassessment, speed,

and scale of tech-

nological innovation,

our changing demo-

graphic reality (de-

cline in the ‘old’

continent and ex-

plosive growth and

urbanisation in the

emerging econo-

mies), geopoliti-

cal pressures, and

global financial stagnation, a

fundamental reorganisation of

society is a necessity.

As a result, economic, aes-

thetic, and ethical changes

have to be made, challeng-

ing the roles and relationships

between all involved: citizens,

businesses, and government.

Whether this will happen

gradually, radically, forcibly or

in an organised manner, re-

mains to be seen.

Clearly this affects the task,

the agenda, and the sphere

of design. After being geared

towards functionalism, we see

the discipline diverging in

various ways. It is becoming

more ephemeral and process

driven, resulting in an active

participation of the ‘prosum-

er’. A trend that translates

into the re-appreciation of

manual labour, history and re-

source expressed as new crafts

(combined with the possibili-

ties new technologies offer),

knitting, weaving or even 3D

printing. In the aftermath of

designing imperfection into

the object, we now see design-

ers investigating topics and

tools that deal with insecuri-

ty, taste, smell or trust. There

are fewer grand gestures. So-

cially empowering, small-scale,

self-initiated, and temporal

practices are flourishing. The

buzzwords are DIY, the com-

mons, and bottom-up. The

distinction between amateur

and professional, private and

public, is blurring. The focus

on signature and authorship is

shifting towards collaborative

practices. In other words, there

is a hugely optimistic marry-

ing of cultural and social rel-

evance with societal necessity,

so that values other than the

solely economic can take cen-

tre stage.

The ambition of DOMESTIC

AFFAIRS is to research the

potential of operational per-

spectives, new partnerships,

and organisational struc-

tures, between cultural agents,

stakeholders, and designers.

In this exhibition, we try to

understand the conditions of

our time and their impact on

the interior.

Saskia van SteinDirector Bureau Europa,

Platform for the designed environment, Maastricht.

In 2012, Maurer United Architects (MUA) set up a foundation to help the Dutch Creative Industry work across the national borders towards Germany and Belgium. After two years of practice, MUA remarked the huge poten-tial for the regions of the Netherlands, Flanders and the German state Nordrhein Westfalen to develop a common cultural economy. United, these regions would be able to from a leading creative industry on a glob-al scale. This would require a massive cultural cross-over approach among these regions. MUA tries to break down the traditional frames of Dutch Design and open it towards external influences. Under the name Dutch De-sign Exchange (DDX) the foundation continues to set up self-initiated projects to change the Dutch Creative Industry into a fully inter-disciplinary and internation-al operating sector without any boundaries.

Marc Maurer and Nicole Maurer

Dutch Design Exchange, Maastricht

DOMESTIC AFFAIRS is a

project by Saskia van Stein

(director of Bureau Europa),

Marc and Nicole Maurer

(Dutch Design Exchange),

curated by Agata Jaworska

and Giovanni Innella (Institute

of Relevant Studies).

Featuring work by Atelier

NL, Bas van Beek, Robin

Bergman, Konrad Bialowas,

Laura Cornet, Droog Lab,

Earnest Studio, Govert Flint,

EventArchitectuur, Maaike

Fransen, Alix Gallet, Corradino

Garofalo, Ward Goes, Imme

van der Haak, Gerard Jasperse,

Elisa van Joolen, Chris Kabel,

Anja Kaiser, Martti Kalliala,

Merel Karhof, Noortje de

Keijzer, Erik Kessels, Pieteke

Korte, Karel Martens, Arnout

Meijer, Mieke Meijer,

Metahaven, Migle Nevieraite,

Simone C. Niquille, Ruben

Pater, PeLiDesign, Martina

Petrelli, Pinar&Viola, Dirk

Ploos van Amstel MA, Lianne

Polinder, Lex Pott, Prins &

Van Boven, PWR studio, Raw

Color, Helmut Smits, Studio

Job, Studio Makkink & Bey,

Studio Minale-Maeda, Jenna

Sutela, Mark Jan van Tellingen,

Thomas Vailly, Jesse Visser.

Exhibition Identity Design Displacement Group

Exhibition Design Maurer United Architects,

Institute of Relevant Studies

Exhibition Production Bendewerk (Tijmen Dekker,

Looy Driesser, Tom Lugtmeijer)

Production Ina Hollmann, Floor Krooi

Graphic Design DDG

Translations Language Unlimited,

Jason Coburn

Proof Reading Joyce Larue

Editing Saskia van Stein (Bureau Eu-

ropa), Agata Jaworska and

Giovanni Innella (Institute of

Relevant Studies).

InfoThe exhibition takes place dur-

ing the PASSAGEN in Cologne,

January 19–25, 2015

Address: Kunsthaus Rhenania,

Bayenstrasse 28, 50678 Cologne

Opening times: 11:00–20:00

Contactd o m e s t i c a f f a i r s

@bureau-europa.nl

DomesticAffairs

Bureau EuropaAs a presentation and network

organisation, Bureau Europa

presents exhibitions and other

activities in the field of ar-

chitecture and design from a

social perspective. Bureau Eu-

ropa’s focus is mainly on Eu-

rope and the Euregion in con-

nection with their social agenda.

bureau-europa.nl

Dutch Design Exchange DDX operates as a mediator

between Dutch creatives and

the industry. Its field of oper-

ation spans across the bound-

aries of the various design

disciplines, across the eco-

nomic fields and across na-

tional borders (towards Bel-

gium and Germany).

dutchdesignexchange.com

Institute of Relevant StudiesInitiated by Giovanni Innella

and Agata Jaworska, Insti-

tute of Relevant Studies is a

studio for curation, research

and design. Permanently in a

state of beta, the IoRS devel-

ops new models for business

and culture as a form of de-

sign and expression.

agatajaworska.com

giovanniinnella.com

Design Displacement GroupThe DDG consists of fif-

teen designers and one social

scientist from various disci-

plines, levels, cultures and

nationalities, collaborating on

different, often self-initiated,

projects in changing compo-

sitions. Their design meth-

odology should therefore be

understood as collective and

post-signature.

designdisplacementgroup.com

engage

private

distrust

retreat

public

trust

3

Heather Schreck was asleep

around midnight in her He-

bron home when a voice

startled her. “All of

a sudden, I heard

what sounded

like a man’s

voice but I

was asleep

so I wasn’t

s u r e , ”

Heather said.

Disoriented and

confused, Heath-

er picked

up her

c e l l

p h o n e

to check

the cam-

era in her 10-month-old

daughter Emma’s room. The

camera was moving, but she

wasn’t moving it.

“About the time I saw it

moving, I also heard a voice

again start screaming at my

daughter. He was scream-

ing, ‘Wake up baby. Wake

up baby.’ Then just scream-

ing at her trying to wake her

up.” That’s when Heather’s

husband, Adam, ran into Em-

ma’s room. Adam said the

camera then turned from his

petrified daughter to point

directly at him.

“Then it screamed at me,”

Adam said. “Some bad things,

some obscenities. So I un-

plugged the camera.

According to tech experts,

wireless IP cameras like the

one the Shrieks have are an

easy way for hackers to open

a cyber door directly into your

home.

“Any kind of Internet-

connected device essentially

could be subjected to this,”

said Dave Hatter, a solutions

expert for Infinity Partners.

And experts say once they get

inside the camera in your

home, hackers may

also be able to

get inside your

lives.

Hatter’s ad-

vice is to

change the

password on

your Wi-Fi as

well as the cam-

era itself, and make

them different. Also,

check the

m a n u -

f a c t u r -

er’s web-

site regularly for

updates you can

download since the available

updates may not show up di-

rectly on the device, as they

do on your computer or cell

phone. The Foscam camera,

for example, has a known

firmware vulnerability and

had released an update to

correct the problem but the

Schreck’s were unaware of it.

These are some of the sim-

ple security steps the Schreck

family will now be taking af-

ter an intruder walked into

their home through their se-

curity camera.

Edited version of ‘FOX19

Investigates: Hacker hijacks baby

monitor’ by Amy Wagner. Accessed

2 January, 2015 at http://www.

fox19.com/story/25310628/

hacked-baby-monitor

Hacker hijacks baby monitor

Airbnb guest stays more

than 30 days, gets tenant’s rights

The Web makes everything better. Well, at least those who make money on the Web like to claim that. How-ever, there are times when the apparent ease of Web commerce hides difficult aspects. This is something that Cory Tschogl is discov-ering.She owns a condo in Palm Springs, Ca. She rents it out on Airb-nb. She agreed to rent it out for 44 days to a man who may or may not be called Maksym. P e r h a p s the business was, for her, too good to pass up. However, as she told the San Francisco Chronicle, she wished she’d done a little more legal studying before agreeing to his request.The law in California is, to Tschogl at least, the least helpful part. She claims Maksym was a difficult ten-ant from the beginning.

However, given that his stay was from May 25 to July 8, he now has tenant’s rights.In order to get him out of her condo, she has to go through a full eviction pro-cess, which might take three to six months and cost

her up to $5,000. In California, if s o m e o n e rents for 30 d a y s , t h e y are con- s i d e r e d on a m o n t h -t o -month lease.

Edited version of ‘Airbnb guest

stays more than 30 days,

gets tenant’s rights’ by Chris

Matyszczyk. Accessed 2 January,

2015 at http://www.cnet.com/

news/airbnb-guest-stays-30-days-

gets-tenants-rights/

Affairs

4Domestic

Disruption Begins at

Homeby Martti Kalliala and Jenna Sutela

On Valentine’s Day 2006 the Finnish housing market as it had been known so far was to be reshaped — or ‘disrupted’ — effectively overnight. Until then, buy-ing and selling homes had been facilitated by real es-tate brokers, working on commission and charging a handsome, standard fee of 4.88% of the home’s total cost — a remuneration that felt unjustified in a booming housing market where prop-erty seemed to practically sell itself. This was all going to be changed by the ag-gressively launched startup Igglo; an online brokerage that eliminated the need for brokers as actual biological persons, and which prom-ised to slash its fee by more than half from the industry standard.Whereas old broker wis-dom advocated seduction via personal charisma and exploiting, for example, cul-turally coded olfactory as-sociations by baking in an apartment one hour before its presentation to potential buyers, Igglo understood the logic of the rapidly

changing image economy under-girded by the con-comitant rise of social media and mobile computing. In addition to of-fering the ‘styling’ of homes as part of its services, Ig-glo became (in-)famous for pho-tographing every

building in Helsinki, the city it launched its operations in, and putting all of the real estate contained in them up for sale on its website. Using the company’s image repos-itory buyers could ‘earmark’ buildings in which they were interested buying property, whereas sellers could put their apartment up for sale ‘silently’, to be connected with potential buyers via Ig-glo only when the latter had marked interest in the same building. This caused im-mediate public uproar: both tenants of social housing and owners of private hous-

es found their homes listed as potentially purchas-able real estate alongside churches, schools, libraries and publicly owned, histori-cally valuable edifices. Yet what Igglo did was nothing more than unveil a condition already fully in existence: the complete integration of the disposition of housing with that of the market.Indeed, the most successful political project of the late 20th and early 21st centuries might have been the pro-motion of homeownership and its ‘everyone a share-holder, everyone an owner’ ethos as an aspirational, naturalized condi-tion. Or rather, in de bte dn e s s and vulnerabil-ity to the moral blackmail of austerity as well as the naturaliza-tion of the ‘ f a m i l y ’ as the ba-sic household/mortgage subject.In their essay ‘Barbarism Begins at Home’ 1, Pier Vit-torio Aureli and Martino Tat-tara perfectly capture the world Igglo was born into: “Houses are sold not just as accommodation but as a ‘life style’, a self-sufficient cap-sule containing the supreme individualized space. This phenomenon has been a ma-jor contributor to the finan-cialization of households: in other words, our economy of debt is also driven by the image of housing.” But what is the image? Aureli and Tattara locate it in the su-perfluous layers of design-veneer and the production of fake diversity that mask the generic, common nature of housing—as shelter for the human animal. We, how-ever, would like to suggest that the image economy of housing has acquired a new pattern recognition capabil-ity and correlates with the image of liquidity in an in-

creasingly isomorphic pat-tern.As in the container box, data center box, Amazon parcel box or server stack box, value no longer lies in the apartment (box) itself, neither as a ‘machine for liv-ing’ nor a static image, but rather in the flow and re-trieval of information, mean-ings and materials it allows for. Where Igglo’s first gen-eration disruption worked through facilitating the flip-ping of the box, that is, sell-ing a home-as-a-whole for profit, what counts in this emerging condition is its

interchangeability, ca-pacities, symbolic

capital and pro-duce.In other words, the home has become both a site and form

of production. Or, to put it dif-

ferently, the home itself, as well as the forms of life it fos-

ters, have been made productive. To cap-

ture the ethos of today’s fully-formed homeowner, the figure of the sharehold-er must be augmented with those of the entrepreneur (to whom home = produc-tion) and the asset manager (to whom home = market position). Where a financial trader monitors, analyzes and changes her assets

via the specialized tools provided by a Bloomberg Terminal, the homeowner’s interface is a home PC or a smart phone; its tools social media, bookmarking and recommendation apps, on-line market places, different cloud-based networks.Airbnb hosts rent their un-occupied living space and other short-term lodgings to guests; online auction vendors maintain a constant flow of things in and out. Some open up their domes-tic life to an online audience by fixing a voyeur cam in their apartment and getting on with household chores while participating in a sex chat for money. Others par-ticipate in the lucrative cot-tage industry of cultivating legal or illegal cash-crops. Where possible, homeown-ers connect their homes into peer-to-peer energy grids, commodifying the solar ca-pacity of their home’s exte-rior surface. The society of homeowners also monitors and manipulates what hap-pens around their roofs and walls: the development of the living area, the weather-ing of the building, the ris-ing of sea level and its ef-fect on the view from the apartment…

In speculating with their home and its contents on the market, one is constant-ly at work. Because they are so intensely consumed, the management of homes be-comes fanatic, their main-tenance a full time job. In-deed, what if we accelerated this condition to its logical conclusion: separated ‘liv-ing’—the act of dwelling—from our homes and, in that, everyday life itself? What if it did not adhere to na-tional borders, or structure itself around an artificial notion of familiality? Today, houses for things dot the fringes of large cities—our debt-driven economies have necessitated the construc-tion of a self-storage urban-ism to house the surplus of our material accumula-tion. Instead of subjecting our possessions to nega-tive interest in storage why not simply store ourselves. Instead of curating mauso-leums to our own lifestyles, liquefy all there is to be liq-uefied in the homes we cur-rently inhabit and recite the words of Gregory White-head: “I am the gypsy; am I the gypsy that feeds off the fear that I might be a gypsy, that I might be on the loose, that I might be unattached, that I might have nowhere to go but your place…” 2

1. Dogma: 11 Projects, AA

Publications2013

2. Gregory Whitehead: Body

Fluids (and other mobile homes),

Oasis,Semiotext(e)1984

Edited version of ‘Disruption

Begins at Home’ by Martti Kalliala

and Jenna Sutela, first published

by Helsinki Photography Biennale

2014.

MINI FABLAB IN UTRECHTBart Bakker organized his ga-rage in Utrecht (NL) to house

a mini Fablab as well as his own car and two beds. Ev-eryone is welcome to use Bart Bakker’s mini Fablab. Send an email to: bart@minifablab.nl; Bart Bakker will move his car for you and help you get your 3d printed models.

MORE AT: WWW.MINIFABLAB.NL/AT-THE-MINI-FABLAB

5

Affairs

Zilla van den Born deceived her loved ones into thinking she was enjoying an exotic five-week holiday across South East Asia as part of a university project. But the 25-year-old was actually still at home in Amsterdam and used Photoshop to cre-ate the authentic images before posting them on Facebook.Zilla said, ‘I did this to show people that we filter and manipulate what we show on social media – we create

an ideal world online which reality can no longer meet. ‘My goal was to prove how common and easy it is for people to distort reality. Ev-eryone knows that pictures of models are manipulated, but we often overlook the fact that we manipulate re-ality also in our own lives.’The graphics student was waved off at the airport by her family before she took a train back to Amsterdam and spent the following 42 days indoors cleverly alter-ing images.Over the course of five weeks Zilla seemed to en-joy snorkelling, sample au-thentic Asian food, travel in traditional tuk-tuks and she even visited a Buddhist temple.But in reality the photo-graphs were taken in her own swimming pool, or using venues around Amsterdam – and the authentic Asian food was in fact cooked by Zilla herself. She even cre-ated the illusion of a Thai hotel room in her own bed-room, using old Christmas decorations and an um-

What a scam! Student boasts to friends about trekking through Asia

brella, to fool her parents during Skype sessions. If all of that wasn’t enough she sent text messages in the middle of the night and posted Asian souvenirs that she had actu-ally bought from local shops.

Excerpt from ‘What a scam!

Student boasts to friends about

trekking through Asia, visiting

stunning beaches, tasking local

cuisine and meeting Buddhist

monks – using FAKE photos taken

in her town’ by Anucyia Victor.

Accessed 2 January, 2015 at

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/

travel_news/article-2749306/

What-scam-Student-boasts-friends-

trekking-Asia-visiting-stunning-

beaches-tasting-local-cuisine-

meeting-Buddhist-monks-using-

FAKE-photos-taken-home-town.html

In the 1990s, Taichi Yoshida, the owner of a small moving

company in Osaka, Japan, began noticing that many of his jobs

involved people who had just died. Families of the deceased

were either too squeamish to pack up for their dead relatives,

or there wasn’t any family to call on. So Yoshida started a

new business cleaning out the homes of the dead. Then he

started noticing something else: thick, dark stains shaped like

a human body, the residue of liquids excreted by a decompos-

ing corpse.

These, he learned, were kodokushi, or “lonely deaths.” Now he

has seen plenty — these deaths make up 300 of the 1,500 clean-

ing jobs performed by his company each year. The people die

alone, sprawled on the floor beside crumpled clothing and dirty

dishes, tucked beneath flowery bedspreads, slouched against the

wall. Months — even years — can pass before somebody notices

a body. On occasion, all that’s left are bones. “The major-

ity of lonely deaths are people who are kind of messy,” says

Yoshida. “It’s the person who, when they take something out,

they don’t put it back; when something breaks, they don’t fix

it; when a relationship falls

apart, they don’t repair it.”

In Japan, kodokushi, a phe-

nomenon first described in the

1980s, has become hauntingly

common. In 2008 in Tokyo,

more than 2,200 people over

65 died lonely deaths, accord-

ing to statistics from the city’s

Bureau of Social Welfare and

Public Health.

Edited version of “Japan’s ‘Lonely

Deaths’: A Business Opportunity”

by Justin Nobel. Accessed

2 January, 2015 at http://

content.time.com/time/world/

article/0,8599,1976952,00

A recent consumer appliance trend coming out of South Korea is the rise of the compact or mini appliance. Daewoo Electronics introduced the first wall-mounted washing machine in 2012 with a load size of just three kilograms. These small appliances appeal to the growing number of single-person households that do not produce large quantities of laundry. With consumer appliances saturated in the region, manufacturers are expected to continue heavy promotion for mini-appliances.

Japan’s‘Lonely Deaths’: A Business Opportunity

6Domestic

Every year, we, Pinar&Viola,

launch a surface collection

inspired by the desires of that

year that also reflects the

trends and cravings for the

year to come. [...] Recently, we

were introduced to something

which we believe is in the the

air; it’s not even avant-garde

yet, but we believe it will rise

in five years’ time and be

accepted by openminded peo-

ple in about ten years.

This new fascination is poly-

amory, the philosophy and

practice of loving more

than one person. Our

contemporary-culture

scanner instincts tell u s

that polyamory will be the

next sexual liberation

and sensual sensa-

tion. The collective,

deep, committed,

long-term lov-

ing relationship

is slowly rising

up from the un-

derground, em-

boldened by the

success of gay

marriage.

This subject

can make

c o n s e r v a -

tives, the

t r a g i c om i c

guardians of

holy

m a t -

r imony

c u r r e n t l y

soured over

gay-marriage

r i g h t s ,

e v e n

m o r e

frustrated.

Let’s drop

the assumption

that God does not

like sex: let’s move on and

start a dialogue on the sexu-

al needs of our contemporary

society.

In the current state of poly-

amory affairs, we got in-

formed on the possibility of

various combinations. A cou-

ple can welcome a lover, two

couples can start a relation-

ship together and even much

larger and complicated con-

structions are possible,

exceeding four people. In

poly-terminology a unit

of three is called

a “triad” and

a unit of four a

“quad”.

A triad relation-

ship can be

characterised

as forming

a triangle,

or per-

haps a

“ V ”

when one

of the

people in-

volved is the

connec t ing

link be-

tween the

other two.

A l s o ,

t e r m s

l i k e

“prima-

ry” and

“second-

ary” can

be used to

define your re-

lationship within

the triad

and larger

g r o u p s .

These never-

ending group-

ing possibilities

have one thing in

common; bringing together

people who do not have re-

striction of gender definitions.

People practicing polyamory

do not make a checkbox choice

to be (with) a woman and a

man, nor they

are confused

and seeking

secretly for

the answer

in the dark

rooms of

trans gender

clubs.

From within

the ocean of

an efficien-

cy-obsessed,

multitasking,

short atten-

t i o n - s p a n

culture, this

type of rela-

t i o n s h i p

sounds like

the best in-

vention after

i P h o n e .

Imagine, if

your wife

loves hip hop and you dislike

it, one of her other lovers can

take her to a Chief Keef con-

cert. Or imagine a world

where you no longer need to

force yourself to be nice to

people because one day they

may babysit your kid. Or sim-

ply ask, while having over ten

social media profiles, hun-

dreds of apps, over 50GB of

iTunes data, rooms full of

clothing with matching i-

Phone cases and five differ-

ent daily training models, and

while starting every other

sentence with “this is my

favourite”, can we still think

that one person can satisfy

every need?

We believe

p o l y am o r y

will con-

tribute to

w o m e n ’s

emanc i pa-

tion and the

state of

motherhood.

It’s in com-

plete accord

with Sheryl

S a n d b e r g ,

feminism’s

new face,

a n d

her project

to empower

women. Thanks to a polyamo-

ry relationship, you can have

children, work hard and even

have hobbies.

Edited version of ‘Polyamory

is the new monogamy’ by

Pinar&Viola, first published by

Dazed&Confused. Accessed 2

January, 2015 at http://www.

dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/

article/16140/1/polyamory-is-the-

new-monogamy

From within the ocean of an efficiency-

obsessed, multitasking,

short attention-span culture, this type of relationship

sounds like the best invention after iPhone.

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7

Affairs

The Unregulated

Work of Mechanical

Turk

Ever wonder what our labor market would look like with-out minimum wages or labor law protections? Take a look at the brave new world of online piecework platforms, like Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, which allows employ-ers, politely termed “re-questers,” to post jobs for a “global, on-demand, 24 x 7 work force.”Workers are offered pay for completion of a series of Human Intelligence Tasks (HITs), easily fragmented activities (like transcription, categorization or tagging) in which computers actually need assistance. Spamming and fake reviewing can be easily commissioned. Estimates of what workers can earn on these crowd-sourced tasks range from about $1.20 to $5 an hour without any benefits. Em-ployers treat them as in-dependent contractors not covered by federal minimum-wage legislation. A standard terms-of-use agreement gives employers the freedom to reject an employee’s work on any grounds; workers have no easy recourse.What started as a niche experiment has become a major global industry. Like some other activities, like work at call centers, digi-tal piecework represents a form of virtual labor migra-tion that denationalizes em-ployment. Mechanical Turk alone engages 500,000 ac-tive workers in more than 100 countries, with workers heavily concentrated in two countries: the United States (with 50 percent of the to-tal) and India (with 40 per-cent).About 70 percent of its em-ployees are women, many of whom probably can’t find other opportunities to work from home with flex-ible hours and are therefore willing to accept low wages.The Mechanical Turk Web site promotes itself with a quotation from a proud chief executive: “Over all,

we estimate saving 50 per-cent over other outsourc-ing methods.” Yet as both Zakia Uddin on Alternet and Julian Dobson on The Huff-ington Post point out, these labor practices haven’t got-ten as much attention as sweatshop practices in oth-er countries.One recent academic pa-per on the future of crowd work, acknowledging sweat-shop anxieties, asks, “Can we foresee a future crowd workplace in which we would

Muji

markets emergency

kits in

Japan

For many, the most anxiety-

provoking aspect of earth-

quakes is the fact that they

can strike anywhere at any

time, leaving no opportunity

to prepare. Japanese life-

style brand Muji is helping

shoppers plan for the worst

with its “Itsumo, Moshimo”

(Whenever, Whatever) cam-

paign. Shortly after the March

11 earthquake and tsunami in

Japan, the retailer created

a website illustrating how a

number of its products could

be assembled into emergency

preparedness kits, preserved-

food storage bins and furni-

ture fasteners. Muji says the

kits allow owners to “live

daily lives comfortably, but …

also prepare for the event.”

Edited version of

‘Muji markets

emergency kits in

Japan’ by Jessica

Vaughn. Accessed

2 January, 2015 at

http://anxietyindex.

com/2011/10/muji-

markets-emergency-kits-in-japan/

want our children to partici-pate?” It does not provide a clear answer.[Mechanical Turk] will re-quire some assurance of human rights, including ac-cess to decent employment, living wages and high-quali-ty public education.

Edited version of ‘The Unregulated

Work of Mechanical Turk’ by Nancy

Folbre. Accessed 2 January, 2015

at http://economix.blogs.nytimes.

com/2013/03/18/the-unregulated-

work-of-mechanical-turk/?_r=0

During imm cologneHet Nieuwe Instituut

(Rotterdam, The Netherlands) presents:

I A M I N D U S T R Y.A 3D-Printing Workshop for All Ages

Het Nieuwe Instituut presents a series of design work-shops and tools to the imm cologne public days visitors (January 24 and 25, 2015) on a 100m2 creative play-ground with 3D printing pens, 3D-printed LEGO and more. Het Nieuwe Instituut combines new insights from de-sign and e-culture, inviting visitors to make extraordinary things with new accessible technologies. The focus of the workshop is on plastic as a material and the 3D-printing pen, a new digital toy which allows you to create your own three-dimensional structures.

During the workshops, Dutch designers Bas van Beek and Helmut Smits will explore the possibilities of the tool and stretch its potential with the visitors to the fair. For de-signer Bas van Beek the challenge is to apply modernist design principles to a medium with endless possibilities to create new forms.

I AM INDUSTRY, at imm cologneMessehalle 1, Messeplatz 1, 50679 Köln

Het Nieuwe Instituutwww.hetnieuweinstituut.nl

Order your own Box-o-RamaThiscabinetiscreatedbyopensourcedesigntools.Youcanconstructacustomcabinettofityourroom,bydragginganddroppingboxesontoanonlinesheetofwood.Butifyoudon’twanttomakedesigndecisions,here’stheeasyway.Thiscompositionhasbeenpre-designedbythecreatorsthemselves:architecturaldesignstudioEventArchitectuur.Itiswhattheythinkisthebest.

Order at: droog.com

8Domestic

OPACITY-TRANSPARENCYHow the home serves as a mediator for our simultaneous demand to live a public and a private life inside. How we blur our houses on Google Street View, while we invite unknown guests to rent one of our rooms for a night or two. How we want to be popular yet invisible.

01. Realface Glamouflage by Simone C. Niquille, 2013

02. Harold by Jesse Visser, 201303. Tricking Biometrics by Alix Gallet, 201404. emrprotection Switzerland Faraday Bed

Canopy05. My Knitted Boyfriend by Noortje de

Keijzer, 201106. The Fourth Wall by Corradino Garofalo,

201407. News for Eternity by Ward Goes, 2013

(Painting: Edward Snowden by Mattia Papp, 2013)

08. MOEP Crib Chair Combo by Dirk Ploos van Amstel MA, 2010

09. Light is a Vector (projecting a line) by Arnout Meijer, 2014

10. Blue Sky Lamp by Chris Kabel, 201411. Drone Survival Guide by Ruben Pater,

201312. Forced Transparency by Robin Bergman,

201313. Walzkörpersperre by Prins & Van Boven,

2014 14. Transience by Lex Pott, 201115. New Born Fame by Laura Cornet, 2013

We blur our houses on digital street views, we build Faraday cages around our beds, we allow strangers to stay in our homes, we share what we eat, we earn cents for every click, we prepare for disasters and engage with local and remote communities.Not only is our home a place to live in, it has also become a means to make a living, a place to engage, avoid or disrupt political sys-tems and global economies. Through the home – its cables, sat-ellites, windows and doors – we connect and engage, as well as escape and retreat. Domestic Affairs explores the home as an interface for our social, economic and political lives.

Wir verpixeln unsere Wohnhäuser auf virtuellen Straßenabbil-dungen, wir errichten faradaysche Käfige um unsere Betten, wir erlauben Fremden, in unserem Heim zu übernachten, wir teilen unsere Mahlzeiten mit anderen, wir verdienen mit jedem Klick Geld, wir bereiten uns auf Katastrophen vor und sind in nah- und ferngelegenen Gemeinschaften aktiv.Unser Heim ist nicht nur eine Wohnstätte, sondern mittlerwei-le auch ein Mittel, Geld zu verdienen, ein Ort, an dem man sich für politische Systeme und Wirtschaften in der ganzen Welt engagiert, sich von ihnen zurückzieht oder sie unterminiert. Von unserem Heim aus – über Kabelanschlüsse, Satelliten, Fenster und Türen – knüpfen wir Kontakte und Verbindungen, doch wir nutzen es auch als Rückzugsort. „Domestic Affairs“ untersucht das Heim als Schnittstelle zu unserem Sozialleben, unserem Wirtschaftsleben und unserem politischen Leben.

Agata Jaworska and Giovanni Innella

Institute of Relevant Studies

01.

02.

03.

04.

05.

06.

07.

08.

09.

10.

12.

14.

15. 13.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

23.

25.

26.

27.

24.

21.

22.

11.

SELF PRODUCER — HOARDERHow the industry meets the home, or rather, how the home dweller can gain greater control over one’s means of sustenance.

16. The Real Thing by Helmut Smits, 2014 (execution by Martien Würdemann, made possible by Synthetic Organic Chemis-try Group, University of Amsterdam and Technical University Eindhoven)

17. Vacuum Cleaner Chair by Studio Makkink & Bey, 2004

18. Wind Knitting Factory by Merel Karhof, 2009

19. Knitting Lamp by Atelier NL, 200620. Framed (Cabinet) by Breg Hanssen with

Vij5, 2011; NewspaperWood by Mieke Meijer, 2003

21. Industry Wallpaper by Studio Job, 201422. Energy-men by Gerard Jasperse, 201323. Chemistry Kit by Home Science Tools24. Investment is Invisibility (Screw) by

Metahaven and Droog Lab, 201125. Table Production Unit by Thomas Vailly,

201326. Quake Alarm27. Renewable Energy Add-on Set by

LEGO Education

49.

9

Affairs

GLOBAL DATAISTHow the whole world has become the home. And how the home is the cen-tre of control for everything/anything outside of it.

44. Face Value by Earnest Studio, 201345. Disruption Begins at Home by

Rasmus Svensson, Jenna Sutela and Martti Kalliala, 2014

46. Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (mturk.com)47. iRobot Roomba48. Airbnb49. Data Republic – Scooter by

Mark Jan van Tellingen, 201450. World Passport, issued by the World

Service Authority, founded by Garry Davis, 1954

51. A Machine’s Perception Handles by Pelidesign, 2013

52. Magic Carpets by Martina Petrelli, 201353. In between by Konrad Bialowas, 201454. Fragment by Earnest Studio, 201455. Segregation of Joy (first prototype)

by Govert Flint, 201456. At Home Anywhere by Erik Kessels for

Droog Lab, 201257. Dutch Sky by Karel Martens, 2014

We blur our houses on digital street views, we build Faraday cages around our beds, we allow strangers to stay in our homes, we share what we eat, we earn cents for every click, we prepare for disasters and engage with local and remote communities.Not only is our home a place to live in, it has also become a means to make a living, a place to engage, avoid or disrupt political sys-tems and global economies. Through the home – its cables, sat-ellites, windows and doors – we connect and engage, as well as escape and retreat. Domestic Affairs explores the home as an interface for our social, economic and political lives.

Wir verpixeln unsere Wohnhäuser auf virtuellen Straßenabbil-dungen, wir errichten faradaysche Käfige um unsere Betten, wir erlauben Fremden, in unserem Heim zu übernachten, wir teilen unsere Mahlzeiten mit anderen, wir verdienen mit jedem Klick Geld, wir bereiten uns auf Katastrophen vor und sind in nah- und ferngelegenen Gemeinschaften aktiv.Unser Heim ist nicht nur eine Wohnstätte, sondern mittlerwei-le auch ein Mittel, Geld zu verdienen, ein Ort, an dem man sich für politische Systeme und Wirtschaften in der ganzen Welt engagiert, sich von ihnen zurückzieht oder sie unterminiert. Von unserem Heim aus – über Kabelanschlüsse, Satelliten, Fenster und Türen – knüpfen wir Kontakte und Verbindungen, doch wir nutzen es auch als Rückzugsort. „Domestic Affairs“ untersucht das Heim als Schnittstelle zu unserem Sozialleben, unserem Wirtschaftsleben und unserem politischen Leben.

Agata Jaworska and Giovanni Innella

Institute of Relevant Studies

28.

29.

30.

31.

32.

33.

34.

35.

36.

37.

42.

39.

45.

46.

47.

48.

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54.

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57.

44.

38.

43.

41.

ADAPT WITH USHow categories don’t exist anymore, and you have to invent your own. How you are who you want to be, live the way you want to live and write your own rules.

28. The Spectacular Times by Ward Goes, 2013

29. Sexed Realities – To Whom Do I Owe My Body by Anja Kaiser, 2014

30. DIY Gamer Kit (with Arduino) by Technology Will Save Us

31. The Fans by Raw Color, 201432. Box-o-rama by EventArchitectuur, 201133. Invert Footwear by Elisa van Joolen,

201434. Technomimicry by v Polinder, 201435. Playing with Electricity by

EventArchitectuur, 201136. JVDV Tuliptower number one by

Bas van Beek, 2014 (Courtesy VIVID Gallery Rotterdam)

37. Visual Interferences by Pieteke Korte, 2014

38. Pink Tints of Blue by Migle Nevieraite, 2014

39. Family Special – Polyamory by Pinar&Viola, 2014

40. Reflections Design Exquis by Lex Pott, 2013

41. Beyond the Body by Imme van der Haak, 2012

42. Hoarding (Dis)order by Maaike Fransen, 2014

43. Dusk / Dawn Mirror by Studio Minale-Maeda, 2010

40.

10

It has been fashionable for

about a decade or more to call

oneself a nomad. Especially

when one is a well-paid ex-

ecutive living off stylish hotel

rooms, credit cards and wa-

fer-thin laptops sending out

emails eagerly read by their

recipients.

However in our times of in-

creasing future insecurity,

a more substantial sense of

nomadism emerges; the cor-

nerstones of middle-class ex-

istence were first no longer

achievable, and now

become no longer de-

sirable, for a growing

group of young, well-

educated people living

in large urban centres

in (nominally) wealthy

democracies. Certain-

ties like

home, fam-

ily, and the

evening din-

ner, which

once defined

the individ-

ual in a continu-

ity of geographical

location and inter-

generational prox-

imity, seem to slow-

ly melt away, and

the condition that emerges

one could call “nomadism”.

This does not mean that peo-

ple do not inhabit places for

longer periods of time, or do

not develop close ties to oth-

ers either by choice or by kin;

on the contrary. But it means

that the relationship between

where and how people live,

and how they relate to oth-

ers, is demanding new design

angles. The number of people

whose marital status is struc-

turally single is fast on the

rise. Possibilities of buying or

even renting a home are being

made increasingly dependent

on the predictability of a ten-

ant’s future income — exactly

a factor that becomes unpre-

dictable with the disappear-

ance of the job contract and

the financialization of near-

ly every sector of livelihood.

Meanwhile, landlord practices

are becoming exceedingly and

ever more openly predatory,

and we don’t mean to excuse

this in any way.

In order to establish what

characterizes the new home,

it is good to start with what

defines homelessness. A

homeless person we gener-

ally define as someone who

would like to but doesn’t

have the means to live in a

home. Sleeping in the streets,

begging for money, and sell-

ing homeless newspapers de-

fine homelessness visibly. But

structurally, more people than

ever before aren’t sure where

they will live next month, and

whether they will have an af-

fordable room or apartment or

not. And even less so, what

that home will look like.

One could assume that this is

just a temporary stage. But

it might well not be. We are

anticipating that a growing

group of people will no longer

make the jump from a struc-

turally nomadic lifestyle to-

ward a fixed home — their no-

madism becoming a permanent

condition and to some extent

a choice. We don’t want to

and should not try to “natu-

ralize” poverty in the same

way that has happened with

the Brazilian favelas — but

realistically speaking, there

seems to be a fundamen-

tal change especially in very

large cities, where the no-

tion of a permanent home is

fading simply because it

is first unattainable

financially, then

undesirable, and

eventually unthinkable. This

is true for cities like

London and New York

and perhaps less true

for cities like Berlin

and Detroit.

We believe that this is

also possible because

other platforms are sup-

planting part of the

home. Platforms like

the internet, and mo-

bile access to it, cannot

provide for livelihood

directly, but they do

provide for a set of

proximities to livelihood, in-

cluding people, and for the

communications infrastructure

to physically coordinate.

The first basic that defines a

(temporary) home is its in-

ternet connection (which cur-

rently presupposes electricity).

The second is its proximity to

some form of public transport.

Thirdly, all other infrastruc-

ture and facilities. While we

may be thinking that nomad-

ism makes people more auton-

omous, in fact they do depend

on an exoskeleton of both vi-

tal and service infrastructures

that is either permanent,

or moving with and

around the nomads.

Infrastructure is

the hallmark of

orga-

n i z e d

city life.

Our entire

domestic

l i v e l i -

h o o d

i s b u i l t on

i t . I t i s

i n - t e r e s t - i n g

to think through the w a y s

that infrstructure seemingly

belongs to no one, while in

fact it is one of the most

closely managed and critical

parts of what a city is. The

idea of nomadism is that you

could tie forms of life other

than the fixed and permanent

home to the infrastructures of

the city.

A few years back in the Neth-

erlands, the architect Francine

Houben was appointed as a

beautifier of the “landscape

of mobility” — meaning the

endless highways and their

office parks. That seems such

an odd idea, because in the

overall arrangement of in-

frastructure there is no such

thing as the art director who

controls its overall look like

Vogue’s September issue.

Infrastructure often al-

ready has a sort of

beauty by itself,

a beauty that

is closer to en-

gineering than

to design. The

Centre Pompidou

by Renzo Piano and

Richard Rogers aimed

to show the infrastruc-

ture of the building as

its central design element.

Google has recently aestheti-

cized the interiors of its data

centres in a similar manner.

The internet is an information

infrastructure that interacts

with the built environment, and

subsequently with the notion

of home, in ever more inter-

esting ways. As a nomad, you

always take the internet with

you — but what else? In other

words what are the things that

even nomads can’t let go of?

There is the internet, there is

IKEA for the short term, and

then there is a small range

of extremely precious objects

or “stories” which everyone

carries with them to their next

place of residence. Design will

have to insert itself here to

create value.

When saying all this, we have

in mind a politically aware

and well-educated, extremely

connected generation of young

people. The need for auton-

omy and collectivity comes

inherent with the social me-

dia (such as Facebook and

Twitter) that allow for both

the coordination and perma-

nent sharing of life and of all

kinds of activities (including

political ones) as well as their

individual nature.

Edited version of ‘A Beautiful

Future’ by Daniel van der Velden,

first published by Droog in ‘Here,

There, Everywhere’.

“Nomadism” means that the relationship

between where and how people live, and how they relate

to others, is demanding new design angles.

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O R D E R http://en.geovital.com/products/electronic-pollution/shielding-paint-t98alpha/

A Beautiful Future

image: Metahavenby Daniel van der Velden

Domestic

11

Affairs

Photo-credit: Thuiswerk Tarwewijk, 2009, Jan Konings, Ralph Kämena

The Hidden Economy of Tarwewijk

From hairdressing to car repair and radio broadcasting, the residential

neighbourhood of Tarwewijk in the South of Rotterdam has a hidden

network of homeworkers.

Tarwewijk is one of the poorest neighborhoods in Rotterdam, charac-

terized by high unemployment and many vacant homes. It is an area of

transience, and those who can afford to leave often do.

The causes of this situation has to do with the disappearance of work.

The district is in proximity to the harbour, and due to automation and

standardization, many operations which once required human labour

have ceased. The result is a mono-functional environment in which

businesses and public life are hard to find.

Behind the apparent silence, and behind the facades, is a flourishing

economy within people’s homes. Inside, one can find business such as

a television studio, home theater, studio, restaurant, DVD distributor,

trading office for agricultural machinery or a hotel.

12

City Planning

the Interior

In the movie Waydowntown (2000), four disgruntled office workers engage in a bet: they will try to last as long as possible without go-ing outside. In their home-town of Calgary, they live in a world where this is en-tirely possible, a landscape of elevated walkways, office atria, shopping malls, un-derground parking garages, and drive-thrus. Inevitably, one by one, each character succumbs to the allure of the outdoors. In a memo-rable scene, one character even runs in circles through a revolving door, just to get the faintest hint of fresh air. The message of the movie is clear: despite architectural ambitions for an ever-larger interior world there is some-thing about the outdoors that is vital, necessary, and unavoidable.Over the years the field of urban planning has come to similar conclusions. While architects and developers pushed for sprawling and connected building com-plexes, since the 1950s a growing body of urbanist literature started react-

ing against it. As people’s daily ac-tivities became increasingly inte-riorized, planners started a campaign in favor of the street and public space. Enlivening streets and civic spaces became a strong focus of the profession.

Increasingly the projects that planners engaged in, visions that they had, and tools at their disposal, be-came geared towards the street and the building en-velope. Urban planning had no business being inside. It

was about the spaces in-between buildings.While the fight for public space was laudable, reject-ing the interior and aban-doning it to other profes-sions might have been an oversight. Ninety percent of our lives are spent inside – a startling statistic put forth by the US Environmental Protection Agency back in 1989. Urban life is dispro-portionately interior life. We sleep for eight hours, work for eight hours, socialize and shop, all more often than not inside. Following this logic, it would seem natural that urban planning be predomi-nantly interior planning. But it isn’t. And it seems today preposterous to suggest that it should start meddling in this domain.

interiors. The movement was responsible for exposing in-hospitable living conditions in major cities like London and New York, demanding better rules and regulations to prevent the squalor that was being manufactured there. Photojournalist Ja-cob Rijs’ documentation of slum conditions in New York City in the 1890s, was as much about the insalubrious overcrowding, and lack of

amenities inside tenements, as it was about the streets surrounding them. Expo-sés such as his helped push through minimum standards

for apartment buildings and their interiors, controlling crowding, light, air, and ac-cess to amenities, but also tenant rights. Here the no-tion of creating a better city and society was linked di-rectly to the health of the interior.But it was the early years of modernism that took on the most holistic synthesis of urban planning, architec-ture, and interiors. The early heroes of modernism busied themselves at every scale, from furniture design to city plans, weaving a consis-tent narrative of efficiency and functionalism. For the Bauhaus, industrial effi-ciency was as important for the kettle as it was for the apartment block. Le Corbus-ier epitomized this spirit tak-ing individual housing units

as machines for living, and extrapolating the concept to make up whole ‘radi-ant cities’. For him, efficient cities were made of effi-cient interiors.Notions of the social inte-rior (utopian s o c i a l i s m ) , the healthy

interior (the public health movement), and the effi-cient interior (early mod-ernism), all emerged with the city in mind –

Floo

r spa

ce (

m2)

The average person spends 90% of their lives inside!

–USA : 214

–Australia : 206

–Denmark : 137

–France : 113

–Spain : 97

–Ireland : 88

–UK : 76

–USA : 214

–Australia : 206

–Denmark : 137

–France : 113

–Spain : 97

–Ireland : 88

–UK : 76

Average Home Sizes Around the World

Interior Urban Visions

The interior actually once played an important role in urbanism. For instance many of the first utopian socialist models that emerged in the nineteenth century attempt-ed to organize society in what were essentially large-scale interiors; cities within a building. Most notable was Charles Fourier’s Pha-lanstère, a self-contained community of 1,500 to 1,600 people living under one roof and working together for mutual benefit. Topolobam-bo in Mexico, and Robert Owen’s New Harmony in the US were conceived in a sim-ilar manner. Here the idea of a continuous interior envi-ronment served as a power-ful metaphor for collectivity. By sharing the same roof, same hallways, and same kitchens, people were re-minded of the fact that they were all ‘in the same boat’, and so had to work together to survive.The public health movement – largely credited for the birth of urban planning – also had a strong interest in

by Brendan Cormier

Domestic

13

acknowledging that interi-ors have an important ag-gregate effect on a city. But since the 1950s there has been a gradual separation and specialization of the design fields. Urban plan-ning has become less and less involved in architecture and its associated interiors, while concurrently the prac-tice of interior design has established its own identity – although it should be not-ed that such a rift is more pronounced in North Ameri-ca than it is in Europe. We’ve reached a situation where urbanists (by their own do-ing) have been essentially shut out of the conversation on interiors. The result is a lack of substantial theory

and normative ideas that unite the city and its inte-rior spaces. It’s also resulted in a dulling of our critical thought concerning the city in general.Part of the problem is the inability of urbanists to ar-ticulate their vision from the inside. How do we organize the interior spaces of mixed-use buildings so that there’s no conflict? How do we ar-ticulate how a building’s in-terior should perform, so that it can co-exist with other spaces around it? The language in the profession has been so far so vague.

Building the New City from

the Inside Out

In the past, urban planning made great strides to im-prove the quality of interior spaces: better light, clean air, basic amenities, mini-mum standards for space, and protection from noxious uses. But over the course of the last century the pro-fession has distanced itself from any study of the inte-rior, a distancing that has hurt the profession itself. Lacking a good vocabu-lary concerning the interior, planners struggle to articu-late any coherent vision of

how interior spaces should function in the context of the rest of the city. A major-ity of the city being interior space, this means urbanism struggles to discuss a ma-jority of what the city actu-ally is. It’s time for urbanists to take back the interior, learn its language, and have a stake in its design and de-velopment.

Edited version of ‘City Planning the

Interior’ by Brendan Cormier, first

published in ‘Volume 34 Interiors’.

Every home is affected by radiation to some degree, whether that be from man-made energies (electrostress) or excesses of natural radiation (geopa-thic stress). The problem confronting us today is that in too many homes the radiation, although at levels far below limits set by government, affects our health, vitality, immu-nity and fertility. Additionally, some types of radiation (electromagnetic fields from power cables) cannot be shielded against and while we can help you improve your home, purchas-ing a house with this problem is a potential disaster.

If you are looking at building, then the block of land you are looking to purchase should be investigated. You don’t want to build a home on a prop-erty that has unfixable problems.Buy or build your home with as few surprises as possible. Before you sign on the dotted line, check for radiation!

Order a pre-purchase radiation inspection at: www.en.geovital.com

Affairs

11 minutes 24 seconds

The average American spends 11 minutes and 24 seconds cleaning the interior of his/her home

on weekdays.

49 % vs. 19%In an average day of 24 hours, 49 percent of

women did housework like cleaning or laundry, while 19 percent of men did such activities.

from 44 to 18 hoursBritish women are only spending approximately

18 hours a week, or 2.6 a day, on housework including cleaning, grocery shopping and

cooking as opposed to 50 years ago when the average was a whopping 44 hours.

only 1/3 only 1/3 of men partake in housework

11 minutes 24 seconds

The average American spends 11 minutes and 24 seconds cleaning the interior of his/her home

on weekdays.

49 % vs. 19%In an average day of 24 hours, 49 percent of

women did housework like cleaning or laundry, while 19 percent of men did such activities.

from 44 to 18 hoursBritish women are only spending approximately

18 hours a week, or 2.6 a day, on housework including cleaning, grocery shopping and

cooking as opposed to 50 years ago when the average was a whopping 44 hours.

only 1/3 only 1/3 of men partake in housework

Design Decoy

On the cover of this years

Dutch Design yearbook

we see Sweety (by Lemz).

The avatar who lures

pedosexuals into

revealing themselves.

#solodining

The area between the Meuse and the Rhine was originally a Germanic-speaking area, inhabited by Celts and Germans. Around the beginning of the Current Era, the Celts were wiped out by Julius Caesar’s Roman legions. Since the Germans were enlisted into the service of the Ro-mans, they maintained a presence in the area. After the fall of the Roman Empire, the Germans temporarily re-gained control until the Franks, led by Charlemagne, took over the area. The Frankish Empire eventually di-vided, gradually transforming into modern France and Germany. Thus, over the centuries, the area has al-ways been polycultural* in nature.The Franconian dialects spread be-yond the boundaries of the former German-speaking area, towards what is now the Netherlands and Belgium, and formed the basis of the current German and Dutch lan-guages. The Franconian dialects of Limburgian and Ripuarisch (Kölsch) are still spoken today in the regions between the Meuse and the Rhine. The dialects are closely related, and Limburgian and Kölsch speak-ers can understand each other. The region marks the linguistic border between the two dialects, whose nuanced differences are evident in the verbs maken and machen, i.e. to make.Dutch Design Exchange (DDX) has been established to facilitate connec-tions between the Dutch and German creative industries. Establishing these connections is nowhere as under-standable as on the linguistic border between ‘maken’ and ‘machen’. In its

search for an accessible and con-nective ‘stimulant’, DDX stumbled on a special beer: Maas-Rheinisches Ur-Pilsner. Brewed exclusively with local ingredients and its own spring water, in a single gulp, one can taste the combined origins of the Meuse-Rhine region, and centuries of refin-ing cultural transformations.

* Polyculture is an agricultural term describing the use of multiple crops in the same space, in imitation of the diversity of natural ecosystems, and avoiding large stands of single crops, or monoculture. Although re-quiring more labour, polyculture has several advantages over monocul-ture. In the long term, it results in more vital and fertile land.

P O L Y –C U L T U R E

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Domestic

15

Während der PASSAGEN – Deutschlands größter Designveranstaltung – prä-sentieren Bureau Europa, Dutch Design Exchange und das Institute of Relevant Studies die Ausstellung DOMESTIC AFFAIRS. Diese Ausstellung soll die Gele-genheit bieten, neue Stim-men des zeitgenössischen niederländischen Designs hören zu lassen.Nachdem lange Zeit die wirt-schaftlichen, politischen und industriellen Machtgefüge vertikal ausgerichtet wa-ren, zeichnen sich die ersten Jahrzehnte des 21. Jahrhun-derts durch eine Horizon-talisierung aus. In der me-dienintensiven heutigen Zeit werden Informationen auf vielen Ebenen durch Wieder-holung übermittelt. Mit Blick auf den großen Stellenwert, die Geschwindigkeit und den Umfang technologischer Innovationen, unsere sich ändernde demografische Si-tuation (Rückgang auf dem „alten“ Kontinent und explo-sive Zunahme und Urbani-sierung in den Schwellenlän-dern) ist eine grundlegende Umgestaltung der Gesell-schaft unumgänglich. Es müssen daher wirt-schaftliche, ästhetische und ethische Veränderun-gen stattfinden, durch die die Rollen und gegenseiti-gen Beziehungen aller be-teiligten Parteien – Bürger,

Unternehmen und Staat – hinterfragt werden. Ob die-se Veränderungen allmäh-lich, plötzlich, mit Zwang oder organisiert stattfinden werden, wird sich noch zei-gen müssen.Natürlich wirkt sich das auch auf Aufgabe und Agenda von Designern und auf den Bereich des Designs an sich aus. Nach der bisherigen Ausrichtung auf Funktiona-lismus ist nun zu beobach-ten, dass die Design-Welt sich in verschiedener Hin-sicht breiter entwickelt und vergänglicher und prozes-sorientierter wird, was zu einer aktiven Beteiligung des „Prosumenten“ führt. Diese Entwicklung bringt mit sich, dass Handarbeit, neue Handwerkskünste als Ausdruck von Geschichte und Ressourcen (in Kom-bination mit den von neu-en Technologien gebotenen Möglichkeiten), Stricken, Weben oder aber 3D-Druck wieder gewürdigt werden. Während die gestalteten Objekte bisher bewusst Un-vollkommenheiten aufwie-sen, erforschen Designer heutzutage auf Unsicher-heit, Geschmack, Geruch oder Vertrauen bezogene Themen und Instrumente. Es werden seltener große Gesten gemacht, und klei-ne, selbstinitiierte, die sozi-alen Verhältnisse stärkende zeitlich begrenzte Metho-

den sind groß im Kommen. Begriffe wie Do-it-yourself, Gemeingut und bottom-up spielen eine wichtige Rolle und die Grenzen zwischen Laie und Fachmann, privat und öffentlich, verwischen. Es wird weniger Wert auf die Erkennbarkeit eines eigenen Stils gelegt und mehr auf gemeinschaftliche Prakti-ken. Mit anderen Worten, die kulturelle und gesellschaft-liche Bedeutung geht eine äußerst vielversprechende Verbindung mit der gesell-schaftlichen Notwendigkeit ein, sodass andere Werte als die rein wirtschaftlichen in den Mittelpunkt rücken können. Mit DOMESTIC AFFAIRS soll das Potenzial von Arbeitsperspektiven, neu-en Partnerschaften und Organisationsstrukturen zwischen Kulturbeauftrag-ten, Interessenten und De-signern untersucht werden. Mit dieser Ausstellung ver-suchen wir, die mit der heu-tigen Zeit einhergehenden Bedingungen und ihren Ein-fluss auf unsere Einrichtung zu begreifen.

Saskia van SteinGeschäftsführerin von

Bureau Europa

Im Jahr 2012 gründete Maurer

United Architects (MUA) eine Stif-

tung zur Förderung der niederlän-

dischen Kreativindustrie um über

die nationalen Grenzen hinaus mit

Deutschland und Belgien zu arbe-

iten. Nach zweijähriger Praxiser-

fahrung sah MUA großes Potential

darin, eine gemeinsame Kultur-

wirtschaft zwischen den Regionen

der Niederlande, Flandern und dem

deutschen Bundesland Nordrhein

Westfalen zu entwickeln. Gemein-

sam wären diese Regionen auf

globaler Ebene in der Lage, eine

führende Kreativwirtschaft zu for-

men, was eine massive kulturelle

Überschneidung dieser Regionen

untereinander erfordert. MUA ver-

sucht, den traditionellen Rahmen

des Dutch Design zu brechen und

ihn durch äußere Einflüsse zu er-

weitern. Unter dem Namen Dutch

Design Exchange (DDX) arbeitet

die Stiftung an selbst initiierten

Projekten, welche die niederlän-

dische Kreativindustrie in einen

interdisziplinären und international

operierenden Sektor ohne Grenzen

verändern soll.

Marc Maurer and Nicole Maurer

Dutch Design Exchange, Maastricht

Domestic AffairsDas Haus hat sich zu einer Wohnstätte der Pa-radoxe entwickelt. Es beherbergt den Wunsch, Privates mit der Öffentlichkeit zu teilen und gleichzeitig in der Öffentlichkeit eine Privat-sphäre zu finden. Das Haus ist eine Schnitt-stelle für die Vermittlung zwischen unseren gesellschaftlichen Beziehungen und spiegelt unsere Verbindung zu unseren lokalen und globalen Nach-barn sowie den politischen und wirtschaftlichen Systemen wider. Wir verpixeln unsere Häuser auf Google Street View und vermieten unsere Zimmer für ein oder zwei Nächte un-bekannten Gästen.

Wir bringen das öffentliche Leben in unser Heim und un-ser häusliches Privatleben in die Öffentlichkeit. Dennoch streben wir nach Kräften nach einer Balance zwischen Pri-vatsphäre und Popularität, Vertrauen und Misstrauen, En-gagement und Rückzug. Durch stärkere oder schwächere Berücksichtigung dieser Parameter verändert sich unser Heim, vor allem aber unterscheidet sich darin das Leben der Bewohner. Die Kombinationsmöglichkeiten solcher Pa-rameter sind unendlich und ändern sich ständig, genau wie der Lebensstil der Weltbürger und ihres Zuhausegefühls. Das Zuhause ist in erster Linie ein Gefühl und stellt erst in zweiter Linie einen Raum, ein Bauwerk, einen Vermögens-wert oder eine Reihe von Geräten und Technologien dar.

engagieren

privat

misstrauen

rückzug

öffentlichkeit

vertrauen

Affairs

InfoThe exhibition takes place dur-

ing the PASSAGEN in Cologne,

January 19–25, 2015

Address: Kunsthaus Rhenania,

Bayenstrasse 28, 50678 Cologne

Opening times: 11:00–20:00

Contactd o m e s t i c a f f a i r s

@bureau-europa.nl

SupportThe exhibition is made possible with

the support of the Creative Indus-

tries Fund NL and the Province of

Limburg.

PartnersThe Netherlands Consulate

General in Dusseldorf,

Gulpener Bierbrouwerij, DAAB and

Het Nieuwe Instituut.

16Domestic